Reflections on God … Man … Life
All of life, for a Christian, is a ministry. We are all called to different types of ministry, yet everything we do is to be done for God’s glory as we spread His truth. My ministry is teaching. I love to teach straight from Scripture, I love to teach things derived from Scripture (such as my C. S. Lewis classes), and I also love to teach in my particular field of expertise, which is American history and government. That last… Read more »
Love is such a misunderstood word. Every good thing that emanates from God can and has been perverted. Some expressions that we call love are just the opposite. C. S. Lewis gives us an excellent, and disturbing, example of this in The Great Divorce. In the fanciful tale of a bus trip from hell to the outskirts of heaven, Lewis lays bare all the roadblocks people set up that keep them from acknowledging God and His truth. One episode involves… Read more »
“The doctrine of the Second Coming has failed, so far as we are concerned,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “if it does not make us realize that at every moment of every year in our lives Donne’s question ‘What if this present were the world’s last night?’ is equally relevant.” We live so much in the “present” that we often neglect what we say we believe about the transitory nature of this world. We have an eternity that awaits us, yet… Read more »
As a historian, and as someone who has also taught in a master’s program of government, I am naturally attuned to the politics of our day. That doesn’t mean I love politics or am particularly enamored of the way politics manifests itself through the aggrandizement of politicians’ egos. Yet I cannot divorce myself from it because it now seems to invade every aspect of our lives. What I do like is governing, in the sense that God is interested in… Read more »
I’m teaching my C. S. Lewis course at my university again this semester. The students began their Lewis reading with Surprised by Joy, his insightful autobiography. We are now focused on Mere Christianity and discussing the significance of that book. Every time I come back to it, I’m deeply impressed all over again, and I always seem to find nuggets of truth and wisdom that stand out more clearly than in my previous reading. This time I was struck particularly… Read more »
Whenever you read Scripture, you never know what might stand out to you—usually something you don’t expect. That’s how the Spirit of God works. This morning I was reading in the Old Testament book of Amos, a prophet who spoke directly to the people of Israel about their sins. They thought they were doing fine and that God accepted their worship. Amos had a different message for them. Chapter five is filled with thoughts and phrases that pierced my own… Read more »
Let me clarify something today. I can almost hear some readers of this blog thinking, “He criticizes the president and Congress so much that he can’t really have any respect for the government.” The opposite is true. I have the highest regard for the federal government. This comes from a reading of the Constitution, the debates over its ratification, and the character of many of those who helped bring it to pass. I believe the form of government set up by… Read more »